Chinese is always secretive about death, but talking about death is a worldwide problem.
As of April 25, Beijing time, the cumulative number of confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide exceeded 140 million, and the cumulative number of deaths exceeded 3.1 million.
● Source: Today's Headlines
A sudden epidemic has caused many families around the world to die and end their lives early. Most of them have not lived a good life in this world and said goodbye to those they loved.
In the face of death, people are always helpless.
We often say, "You never know which tomorrow or the unexpected will come first." This sentence is said too much, as if we understood the matter of death and were ready to face it.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="NaN" > we are always silent in the face of death</h1>
In traditional Chinese culture, talking about death is an inauspicious thing. In everyday conversation, we use the words "past life", "death", or even a simple "gone" instead of the title of death.
Chinese showed an extremely evasive attitude toward death. As Confucius said, "Unknown birth, knowing death" and "respecting ghosts and gods and staying away", so traditional Chinese readers basically do not think about the topic of death, which is also known as a spirit of "joining the world".
The strange thing is that the so-called "birth" Taoist thought also has the ultimate goal of "immortality", which constitutes an interesting cultural phenomenon:
Death, a universal human topic, is mysteriously hidden in Chinese culture.
However, when the two points of "birth" and "death" are established, the integrity of life can be determined, and the meaning of life will become the ultimate goal. So without talking about death, it is impossible to examine life rationally. Traditional culture avoids death, that is, avoids the meaning of life.
This gives us the illusion of "infinite life", an increasing fascination with material life and giving up the limited experience of life. When we are alive, we waste our lives as if life never ends, and in the face of death, we tear our hearts and lungs into hysteria, as if we have never lived.
Infinite remorse in the face of self-death, helplessness in the face of the death of others. How many times have we seen on TV dramas that when the patient's life is hanging on the line, he has to leave a last word with his family, and their family members say "don't say these sad words" one by one, missing the last time back and forth. The family never knows what the deceased wanted to say last, and the deceased closed his eyes with remorse.
If cultural traditions keep us silent about death, then in the open West, is it not true that when we talk about death, we will never look embarrassed?
This is not the case.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="NaN" > talk about death, which is a worldwide problem</h1>
In talking to a few friends in the UK, I found it a worldwide conundrum.
It was an April day in England, spring was coming, flowers of all colors were blooming all over the streets, the scarlet red brick walls were shining in the sun, and everything looked vibrant.
I visited Jennifer's house, where the furniture was brand new and well-placed, with family portraits on the table and people smiling like flowers.
● The picture comes from the Internet, not the photo of the person concerned
She brought me tea, and I touched the bone china tea set, slowly inhaling the water vapor wafting out of the black tea, and opening her memory box from 11 years ago little by little.
She has two sons, Henry and Mike, two little boys who grew up fighting together, sometimes arguing fiercely and often hurting each other. However, when they don't fight, they still play games and football in harmony.
Henry is only 2 years older than Mike, and sometimes Henry goes to the supermarket with his mom and sees the snack shelf and always unconsciously takes 2 servings.
Jennifer told me that they are always awkward, and it is also because they are too similar in personality and like almost the same things, so they often compete.
One morning, they get up early to get ready for school, and at the breakfast table, the last of the oats is snatched by Mike, and Henry gets angry and spills the milk on Mike's craft project. So when the fight broke out again, Jennifer pulled them away and urged them to pack up and go to school.
Mike was angry and shouted at Henry's back, "I hate you, I never want to see you again!" ”
That was Mike's last words to Henry, and that same day, while Riding his bike to school, Henry ran into a driver who was driving with fatigue and was killed in a car accident.
How does Jennifer explain to Mike what happened?
To this day, Jennifer can't think of a good answer, and she can only explain it to him: Your brother went to a better place.
"Better place" is the lingua franca of Europeans and Americans when they talk about death, comforting children when they face the death of grandparents or pets; comforting adults when they have just arrived in society and lost their loved ones.
They also never think about the truth behind death, the "better place" is nothing more than a delaying tactic, in the face of death, they rely on the power of time, expect time to smooth out the sadness, and even erase the memory with the deceased.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="NaN" why should > pay attention to death education? </h1>
Death education is a new field of study, and with the development of the times, people pay more attention to mental health problems. If people do not understand death in advance, after death knocks on the door, they may fall into depression, irritability, and even symptoms of post-traumatic stress response (PTSD).
If adults do not know how to face death, rely on the power of time to smooth out emotions and memories, and in the long run, when they recall the memories with the deceased, only vague fragments of memory remain, and the emptiness of life increases.
And how do children react when they face death?
Suppose a little boy's grandmother dies, he and his parents may have the following conversation:
"Where has Grandma gone?"
"Went to a better place."
"Grandma's out of the house?" So when will you come back? “
"Grandma won't be back."
"Why didn't you come back? Why not take me with you? Am I doing something wrong? ”
……
When children do not understand death, but suffer the pain of death, they either feel guilty that they have done something wrong, so that a family member has died; or they have a greater fear that more loved ones will die and never come back.
British scholar Jewett said that if a child suffers the death of relatives and friends in childhood, but no one faces their emotions and talks about death with them, it will trigger the child's anxiety, depression, suicidal tendencies and alcoholism in adulthood.
This is the meaning of death education.
At the end of 2019, everyone had an infinite yearning for 2020, but an epidemic took the lives of more than 3 million people.
Before the epidemic, countless natural and man-made disasters were staged around the world.
Death education is not to make you regard every day as the last day of life, but to face up to the fact that death must happen, so as to truly cherish the value of life.
People whose job is to talk about life and death
Guo Huijuan, founder of the Taiwan Death Cafe and a master's degree in death studies from the University of South China, also teaches life and death education at universities in Taiwan.
Over the course of four or five years, she held more than 300 "death forums" and talked to tens of thousands of people about death.
● Guo Huijuan
"The youngest participants, from 9 to 93 years old, were able to see everyone's feelings for themselves or life at the end of each event, which was very touching."
Teacher Guo's father died a few years ago, but when her father was alive, she had a long late-night conversation with her father, about her father's life and how to deal with his posthumous affairs, she quietly listened to it and remembered it in her heart. Later, when her father died of illness, she began to deal with his father's posthumous affairs.
Many people argue with other relatives at funeral occasions, each believing that they know the deceased best, so they know best how to deal with the deceased's aftermath. Unlike them, Guo Huijuan knew her father's wishes.
"Later, when my father left, of course, I was still very sad, but I was really glad that we had a good conversation, I knew my father's wishes, and I also knew that I did what he hoped for him, which made me and my father not leave too many regrets, and when I thought about this, I felt less painful and more at ease." 」
It is also the last story with her father, which strengthens Guo Huijuan's desire to develop death education, hoping to make more people avoid lifelong regrets through her own efforts.
Grief counselors are another industry that complements the development of death education. Grief counselors are also a type of psychological counseling, but they are more targeted at the psychological treatment of patients after the loss of relatives and friends.
In the middle of the summer of 2019, I had the privilege of meeting Li Xiaofen, a child grief counselor in Taiwan, who has seen countless children with broken hearts and heard countless heartbreaking stories. The world talks about fairy tales with children, but she talks about death with children. This unique job makes her feel full of a sense of mission for life.
● Source: Taiwan Caterpillar Art Psychological Consulting Institute
She once tutored a little boy who went to the hospital after a car accident, and after a few days in the hospital, he had a chance to wash his hair at the hospital barber shop downstairs, and the people next to him saw him and whispered, "What's wrong with this little boy?" By eavesdropping on the conversations of others, the little boy learned that in the car accident, his father and sister had died.
The sudden disaster devastated his family, and not a single adult stepped forward to tell him the news of his father and sister's death. For him, if death is so unworthy, then his own emotions about death are not worth mentioning.
So the whole process of grief counseling becomes more difficult. Li Xiaofen asked the little boy, where do you think Daddy is now?
The little boy hesitated and said, "It should be in hell."
The little boy said this shocking answer lightly, and Li Xiaofen hesitated and asked him, "Why do you think Daddy is in hell?" ”
"Because Dad talks dirty, that's a bad thing. Those who do bad things go to hell. ”
For a long time after the car accident, the little boy felt that his father was suffering in hell, and he was bent on saving him.
Traditional mythological stories, or cartoons on television, depict scenes of heaven and hell to the audience, and the people who suffer in hell are tragically shaped, which makes many people believe it to be true.
The education of children about death is to clarify these fictional images and let them know that the on-screen interpretation of death is not accurate.
In many cartoons or fairy tales, the dead characters will still come back to life, and it is precisely because of the existence of these media that we should pay more attention to death education and let children know that death is irreversible.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="NaN" > perhaps the warmest thing in life is to talk about life and death</h1>
Death education is an emerging, but difficult, field of study. Because there is no right, wrong way to talk about death with others, whether through religion, faith or fairy tales, no one can give a correct answer to death.
So, what's the point of talking about death? Death education allows us to accept the fact that death will eventually happen, and when we recognize the inevitability and irreversibility of death, we continue to talk about our feelings about death, and when death occurs, we know how to face it.
11 years ago, Jennifer took Mike to the hospital to say goodbye to his brother, he was very frightened, standing far away from the bed, next to his father bowing his head and sighing, tears in the corners of his eyes;
While his mother was crying hysterically and almost screaming, he was so sluggish that he watched everything that happened in the ward, and he had the opportunity to rewrite the last words he said to his brother, but he was unconscious, and he stood there motionless and watched his brother die.
The day I met Mike, he hurried out to play. Jennifer watched him leave and told me, "He rarely mentions anything about his brother, and I think he's sad too." ”
During the pandemic last year, Jennifer emailed me:
Long time no see, hope you are okay.
Because of the Lockdown in London, I stayed home with Mike and watched the death toll rise on the news every day. For a moment I felt very unhappy with Mike, and I think he thought of Henry again.
Mike had reached the age of legal drinking, so one night I took two bottles of beer to his room and talked to him about my brother's death.
I realized that I hadn't dealt with his emotions in the first place, or that I was sad and couldn't help myself and ignored him.
After the chat that night, I don't know if he understood death a little more, but I'm happy that we were able to talk about it.
It reminds me of you, and if you hadn't come to my house to talk to me, I probably wouldn't have realized that Henry's departure would have had such a long, varying degree of effect on Mike.
Thank you for reminding me that talking about death is difficult, even awkward, but we still have to talk about it.
It's hard to talk about death; it's even harder to get death education into people's daily lives.
It is very ironic that this sudden epidemic has made the major media and people reflect on their lack of investment and financial management capabilities, unable to cope with the economic crisis, but still ignore the lack of death education.
And what exactly does death education teach us? There is no definitive answer.
But by thinking about and discussing death, we can truly understand the value of life, as well as our goals and expectations in life; to use "living in the moment" as a guide to action and a life creed, rather than just talking. Text/Spring Peach